Word.ws English Dictionary

dochmius

dochmius noun: a metrical foot of five syllables used in Greek tragedy for highly anguished scenes. The metrical pattern is typically: short-long-long-short-long.

Noun

dochmius (plural dochmii or dochmiuses)

  1. A metrical foot of five syllables used in Greek tragedy for highly anguished scenes. The metrical pattern is typically: short-long-long-short-long.
    • Yet there is good reason to doubt the existence of any such; —good reason to think, that dochmiuses belong to the triple rhythm1843, William O'Brien, The Ancient Rhythmical Art Recovered, page 6
    • This chorus, which consists almost entirely of dochmii, is so corrupt as to present various problems of an almost insoluble character, although portions of it have yielded to the brilliant emendatory efforts of Hermann.1910, R. J. Walker, Anti Mias: An Essay in Isometry, page 228

Forms of dochmius

pluraldochmii
pluraldochmiuses

Origin of dochmius

From Latin dochmius, from Ancient Greek δόχμιος (dókhmios, “oblique; dochmius”).

Questions about dochmius

What does dochmius mean?
Dochmius means a metrical foot of five syllables used in Greek tragedy for highly anguished scenes. The metrical pattern is typically: short-long-long-short-long.
What part of speech is dochmius?
Dochmius is a noun.
What is the plural of dochmius?
The plural of dochmius is dochmii.

Words near dochmius in the dictionary

  1. Docheny
  2. Docherty
  3. dochmiac
  4. dochmiacs
  5. dochmii
  6. dochmius
  7. dochmiuses
  8. docibility
  9. docible
  10. docibleness
  11. docile

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dochmius (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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